On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 9:29 PM, BrianBrian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
Austin, your page says nothing about the kinds of conversations you would like to see on foundation-l.
You're right, it doesn't. I don't see it as my place to dictate, and I'm looking for most of the input to come from others.
I do, however, hope we can all agree on a bare minimum of "a civil forum for anyone interested to discuss Wikimedia Foundation issues." As a practical matter, improving the signal:blah ratio makes the forum more accessible—to community members, to trustees, to WMF Inc. staff (who, often new to the community, may feel intimidated jumping in).
To me, this is the thing that has gone most wrong about this list. The Foundation just isn't here. They may be subscribed, and they may read, but they do not participate. They do not lead by example (with a few notable exceptions) by raising the level of discourse, and most all of Foundation business is conducted either in person, or in private e-mails. We feel like we have to shout in order to get their attention, and that not only do we not know what they are up to, but we have no say in it.
That's what I'm hoping we'll improve.
I have seen it said several times that this list has too much traffic. I think that's an overgeneralization - it has too much negative traffic. This list can handle as much productive traffic as the foundation cares to seed it with. Rather than having that conversation over private e-mail, consider whether it could benefit from the voices of a few community members. If nobody replies that's fine because by sending it the foundation has both increased the level of transparency in its thinking and operations and also let the community know that it takes what they say seriously.
I agree, but also assert that this isn't going to happen as long as 95% of the traffic comes from 1% of subscribers and an extremely high percentage of the overall volume is spent disputing minor points of semantics and prose. Volume is a problem, and it may not be one we can solve, but maybe we can put more effort into the art of pith?
Austin